


you can hear it in the silence

by slowklancing (notanannoyingfangirl)



Series: bandaids don't fix bullet holes [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Falling In Love, M/M, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, about two sharpshooter boys, hospital cafeteria visits, post season seven, pure fluff, shooting range dates, this is just
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-29 08:19:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15725559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notanannoyingfangirl/pseuds/slowklancing
Summary: Ryan Kinkade was not an easy person to get to know/// soft sharpshooting boys fall in love





	you can hear it in the silence

**Author's Note:**

> So apparently KinClain is a ship that I’ve fallen a little in love with. Of course, my heart still belongs to Klance but… Lance needs all the love he can get! 
> 
> As always, I’m not claiming to own any of the characters, as they’re property of Dreamworks. The title is from a Taylor Swift song. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy the fic <3
> 
> \- slowklancing

Ryan Kinkade was not an easy person to get to know. In elementary school, the teachers had informed his mom that he “didn’t play well with others.” In high school, the principal of his private school called him into his office to discuss his lack of social extracurricular activities. A few months later, Kinkade transferred to the Garrison. But he was a late arrival, most kids had been at the Garrison since they were twelve, thirteen. They already had friend groups and cliques. And Ryan Kinkade, who found it hard enough to be social anyway, didn’t fit.

Ryan Kinkade was not an easy person to get to know. When his mom was sent his progress report from the Garrison it read: “outstanding student with potential to be a great pilot, however he fails to properly communicate with his simulation team”.

He was transferred to another simulation team. He heard the rumors. How one kid was kicked out and three others went missing. Knew that the spot he took had been one of theirs. Wasn’t sure which one.

It didn’t really matter, he supposed.

They were gone.

Things started to change when he met James Griffin. Slowly. They weren’t exactly friends, but James seemed to understand Kinkade’s monosyllabic grunts in a way no one else ever tried to. And with James came Ina Leifsdottir and Nadia Rizavi. They weren’t exactly friends, but Kinkade thought that they might be close.

They were closer than anything else Kinkade had ever had, that was for sure.

By the time the war came to earth and they started piloting the MFEs, Kinkade was pretty sure that they were friends. They were a good team, a cohesive unit. They didn’t talk about personal things like friends were supposed to, but Kinkade thought that maybe that was okay. Maybe you didn’t need to talk about your past to be friends, especially not during a war.

Especially not at a place like the Garrison.

But then the paladins of Voltron showed up, in their brightly colored flying lions with their steadfast determination and their easy camaraderie. They’re a team, that’s easy to see, a good team. But they’re friends, too. And for the first time, Kinkade begins to question his relation with Leifsdottir… with Rizavi… with Griffin.

(Why do they only call each other by their last names?)

On the mission to the Galra base, Kinkade is assigned sniper duty with Veronica, someone he knows from the Garrison, but not well, and one of the paladins. Lance. Her brother, apparently. He hadn’t known Veronica well enough to know that she had a brother, let alone that her brother was one of the cadets who had disappeared into space a year ago.

And he doesn’t know what it is about this red paladin of Voltron who wears blue armor, but he finds himself asking about the sniper rifle the boy was using.

Veronica jumps slightly when she hears his voice.

Kinkade pretends not to notice.

Tries not to think about when the last time he openly asked a question was.

After that, everything is a haze of battle. But if there’s one thing Kinkade knows, its how to keep steady in the midst of chaos. He doesn’t flinch when the Galra open fire.

The infirmary wing clears him after a brief check up. They make sure he doesn’t have a concussion, stitch the wound on his cheek closed. He’s fine. Luckily than most.

He’s heard that the paladins of Voltron have each been given private rooms. Knows that they were found unconscious in their lions, alive… but barely.

What he doesn’t know is why this knowledge makes his gut churn, acid burning in his throat.

He doesn’t even know them. They don’t know him. In fact, Kinkade doubts that they even remember his name.

(Ryan Kinkade was never an easy person to get to know).

< < < > > >

When James asks for someone to run a stack of paperwork that needed processing down to Veronica, Kinkade found himself volunteering.

James blinks at him in surprise. Kinkade isn’t one to volunteer himself for errand-work, not when there are other things he could be doing. Training, fighting, flying. But Kinkade volunteered so James pressed the stack of paperwork into his arms and said that he thought she was in the cafeteria attached to the infirmary. Kinkade doesn’t ask why James doesn’t just take the paperwork down to her, himself, knows that his leader sees such tasks as below him.

That used to bother Kinkade, but it doesn’t, really, anymore. James doesn’t mean to be that way. Just like Kinkade doesn’t mean to not talk much, or Leifsdottir doesn’t mean to be blunt.

Maybe part of being friends is just learning how to accept one another.

The small cafeteria attached to the infirmary is crowded. Although most of the crowd comes from one large family taking up three of the tables in the center of the room. Eleven people. More than Kinkade was used to seeing in a familial setting.

(It made the two-room apartment he had shared with his single mom seem so small in comparison).

A grandmother, a mother and father, a young married couple with two young children, a man barely a few years older than Kinkade, a girl who looked to be around his age, Veronica, and Lance.

Suddenly, approaching to give Veronica the paperwork seems extremely overwhelming.

Kinkade clutches the papers to his chest, hoping they’ll act like some kind of shield as he steps into the fray.

He makes it two steps closer before Veronica glances up and catches his eye, untangling herself from the young girl sitting in her lap. She places the girl back down onto the seat, which the girl quickly abandoned in favor of trying to climb onto Lance’s lap. Kinkade feels his lips quirk up into a smile small as he watches her. A smile he quickly tries to hold back.

“Kinkade,” Veronica addresses him, stepping into her space. “Can I help you with something?”

“I have some paperwork for you from Griffin,” Kinkade says, probably the most he’s ever said to Veronica.

This time, she takes it in stride, pries the stack of papers from his grips.

But something in his eyes must betray him, because she cocks her head slightly and glances back towards the group behind her. “Would you like to come sit down?” She offers.

Kinkade shakes his head, taking a small step backwards.

“Are you sure?” She asks, not looking convinced.

“Who’s your friend, Tía Ronnie?” The little girl perched in Lance’s lap askes.

The girl’s voice is enough to draw the red paladin’s attention, and he tears his gaze away from his family to see who his sister is talking to.

Veronica reaches out and lays a gentle hand on Kinkade’s arm, giving him time to pull away if he wanted to.

(He doesn’t really want to).

“This is Ryan Kinkade, he’s one of the fighter pilots,” Veronica explains to the girl.

“Kinkade, this is my family. Abuela, Mamá, Papá, Marco and his wife, Isabelle, Luís, Elisa, and Lance, of course. These two little ones are Jamie and Elena,” Veronica said, gesturing around the table quickly.

Kinkade tried to follow her explanation of who was who, but the only name that really registered was Lance’s.

Lance, who was looking at him with bright blue eyes.

“Why do you call him by his last name?” The little girl asks, her small voice startling Kinkade into tearing his attention away from Lance.

“All of the MFEs go by their last name. You remember Rizavi, she stopped by last night to meet you?” Veronica asks the girl in a quiet voice, dropping down to her knees so that her face was level with the younger girl’s.

So Rizavi had met Veronica’s family last night. Interesting.

Kinkade filed the information away for later use.

The little girl nodded. “Well, I don’t like it,” the girl declares solemnly.

Kinkade felt his brows raise. Was he… being insulted by a child?

A stifled laugh that must have been from Lance gave way to a loud bout of coughing. When he recovers, the boy looks at the child with an almost-disgusting amount of fondness in his eyes. “You can’t just insult people’s names, Elena,” he tells her.

“It’s fine,” Kinkade hears himself saying, even though it kind of stings.

“I just mean, you should go by your first name,” the little girl continues, sounding far too old for her tender age. “It makes you sound nicer.”

“Hm,” Lance says, reaching up to rub his chin as he pretends to think deeply. “I think you’re right, Elena. Ryan does have a nice ring to it,” but he says this with a soft smile towards Kinkade, obviously not trying to insult him.

“You can call me Ryan,” Kinkade tells the young girl, but he keeps his eyes locked on Lance’s.

“You hear that, ‘Lena? He said we can call him Ryan,” Lance whispers softly into the girl’s hair, but he keeps his eyes trained on Kinkade.

< < < > > >

“Hey, uh, Kin-Ryan, wait,” someone calls after him, and Kinkade slows to a stop. They had just been in a briefing about the Altea found in the Mech that they pulled from the water, and Kinkade isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do with this new information.

If he’s supposed to do anything with it.

But he stops because the voice called him Ryan. And there’s really only one person that the voice could belong to.

The red paladin catches up to him, slowing to a walk from the slow jog he had broken into to catch up to Kinkade.

Kinkade raises a brow at him when the other boy doesn’t say anything, catching his breath, his hand hovering in the air between them like he had been about to brace himself on Kinkade’s shoulder before changing his mind.

“Do you want to go training?” Lance asks him, and Kinkade finds himself nodding before Lance even finishes the question.

They go to the Garrison’s shooting range, Kinkade selects the model of sniper he prefers to use when they’re in the field, while Lance activates his bayard.

“Tell me more about it,” Kinkade requests, sweeping a hand towards the red sniper rifle.

So Lance does.

< < < > > >

“You’re good,” Kinkade tells Lance, later, after Lance nails another target.

Lance blushes. “Uh, thanks,” he says, reaching up to rub at the back of his neck.

“Who taught you to shoot?” Kinkade asks, unable to stop himself, wondering if Lance had been trained by the Garrison. They didn’t specialize in ground combat, so it didn’t seem likely.

“No one,” Lance admits with a soft chuckle. “I kind of had to teach myself.”

Kinkade feels his head stop in his chest before it starts beating again, twice as fast this time. “That’s incredible. You’re incredible,” he says, before blushing bright red.

Lance tears his gaze away, studying the ground. “Well, I don’t know about that,” he says.

Kinkade blinks at him. “You don’t agree,” he says, and it’s not a question. It’s a fact.

Lance shrugs, lifting the rifle back up to his shoulder, lining up another shot. “It was… easy to feel like I wasn’t needed. Out there. In space.”

“You’re a paladin of Voltron,” Kinkade says, perhaps a bit stupidly, but he doesn’t know what else to say to this boy. Has already said more to this boy than perhaps anyone else at the Garrison.

“There was a time when I wasn’t sure that I was supposed to be,” Lance says softly. He fires off the shot.

Dead center.

“Why are you telling me this?” Kinkade asks, not wanting him to stop… just curious. He knows Lance has other friends, the yellow and green ones. The red one who flies the black lion. He doesn’t know why Lance is telling this to him: a stranger.

Lance lets the rifle drop. Shrugs. “You’re easy to talk to.”

Kinkade accepts the answer, raising his own rifle and firing off a shot of his own.

“You’re very impressive,” Kinkade says. “Your family should be proud of you.”

Lance grins softly. “They are.”

“I like your niece,” Kinkade tells him. “She’s very… honest.”

The grin widens a little, “Elena’s the best,” Lance agrees. “And honest is probably a pretty nice way to describe her.”

“She said that she didn’t like my name,” Kinkade says, with a slow nod.

“Well, to be fair…” Lance says, raising his eyebrows.

Kinkade rolls his eyes. “The MFEs always go by our last names. It’s not that weird.”

“Uh huh,” Lance says, not sounding very convinced.

“I never really felt like ‘Ryan’ fit me as a name,” Kinkade confesses. Lance has been doing enough confessing for the both of them, it feels like he should share something.

“Well, I like it,” Lance declares. “Ryan.”

And the way that Lance says it… maybe Kinkade doesn’t mind his first name so much after all.

< < < > > >

“Ryan,” Lance says a few days later, when they’re at the shooting range again.

Kinkade turns his full attention to the boy standing beside him.

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.

“Is this a date?” Lance asks, blushing slightly.

Kinkade sets his rifle to the side, watches as Lance’s bayard disappears into thin air.

He takes a small step closer.

“Do you want it to be?” He asks, and he’s never heard his own voice that low before.

He knows what he wants Lance’s answer to be.

“Yes,” Lance whispers quietly, his blush deepening.

Kinkade holds out one of his hands into the space between them. A wordless offering.

Lance takes it.

< < < > > >

Ryan Kinkade has never been a very easy person to get to know. But Lance Álvarez is very good at getting to know people.

Sometimes balance can be found in the most interesting places.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on twitter to rant about Voltron and be optimistic about season 8 @slowklancing
> 
> And if you enjoyed the fic, please leave kudos or comments as they feed my soul!


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